Fewer vs. Less

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is David Taylor. How are you?

Hi, David. Where are you calling from?

I am calling from Denton, Texas.

Well, welcome to the program.

What’s up?

Well, I go to stores like a lot of people, and they have these checkout lines that say 15 items or less. And I used to wonder, you know, well, don’t they know any better? Don’t they know it should be 15 items fewer? So I would ask the clerk, well, did you know that’s grammatically incorrect? And they’d look at me like I was smoking my breakfast.

And the other day…

Were you?

No, no.

No, I don’t smoke anything, let alone wacky tobacco. I was at this meeting the other day at the company where I work. We sell off some of the extra product occasionally to donate for charity. So I’m sitting in a line, and sure enough, right there at the company is this sign that says 10 items or less. And I looked at this lady, and I said, you know, that’s wrong. And she looked at me like I’d come from another planet instead of having an English degree.

So what is it? Am I right? Am I wrong? And why are they so stupid?

Wow.

Not to put too fine a point on it there.

Well, yeah.

So, yeah. So your objection is what exactly, David?

Well, it’s grammatically incorrect. It should say 10 items or fewer because you can count the individual items. And it’s not like something like give me less soup or there’s less air in the pillow or whatever. It’s not one of those big quantity things that you should use less for. It’s individual items that you should be using fewer.

So why do they do it?

Well, now, David, can you tell me why this bothers you in 25 words or less?

What’s wrong?

Don’t need a letter, Reed. It’s blatantly incorrect. They’re teaching our children to speak like idiots.

Well, let’s unpack this a little bit, David. I mean, you’re right that traditionally the rule that many of us have been taught is that if you can use many with a word, it’s going to be fewer, right? And if you use much with a word, then that would be less, right?

-huh.

Sure.

So fewer than less. If only life were that simple. There’s a point here, an intersection between all these rules where we find the difficulty, and that is that less is also normally used with numbers. And so if you were saying 15 items or less, you might see how somebody might actually say, oh, that seems okay, because I would say there are less than 15 items in my cart.

Sure.

The sum total of all of the items in my cart, but then you’re talking about the sum is less than. Well, you’re not using, but you’re talking about items. So you could say, you know, there’s less than 10,000 items here. There’s less than 100. And so this is where we get the area of confusion here because we are actually counting the items. And so when you do count, you can actually use less. Less is okay. All the standard style guides agree on that.

Oh, really?

So if I’m using a number, then either one is correct?

It depends on the construction of the phrase. And also depends on the level of discourse, but maybe that’s too much detail. I would say you’ve got a couple things happening here. One, if you think this is wrong, great. It’s fine for you to believe that it’s wrong and to insist on it in your own environment where you can control the writing of other people or your own writing or your family or kids, that kind of thing. In a public place, you kind of got to give yourself over to whatever they’ve chosen as their method of communication. And whether it’s for space reasons or style reasons or because they actually believe it’s correct. They may actually have decided to use that language instead of the other language because they think this is the better choice. At some point, just for the sake of your blood pressure, you’ve got to roll with it, right?

Well, sure.

And I do for the most part.

Or shop elsewhere. And I thought, you know, here’s somebody who will at least empathize with me.

Oh, I do.

I definitely do. The part that I empathize most with is the attention to the language being used around you.

Yes.

You have an awareness. Now, whether or not I agree with your assessment or not is another whole matter. But the thing is, I think the first point is to be aware of what you are saying and what you’re hearing and reading.

Well, I hope this venting period has been useful to you.

Very therapeutic. I’m going to wipe the spittle off my microphone.

Yes, I will have fewer problems today.

Excellent.

Take care of yourself then.

All right, y’all. Take care too.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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